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Tag Archives: simon winchester

Next by Michael Crichton (3/10)
Too many characters with too little detail. Crichton seems to be getting worse, writing about topics that are interesting but a story with no substance. He creates short, interesting scenarios and dilemmas to raise issues related to the topic of his book (genetics in this case), but the story and characters are just fluff and a waste of time. The best part is the Author’s Note in the end, where he summarizes his views. Maybe he should write some short-stories instead.

Night by Elie Wiesel (9/10)
A haunting auto-biographical tale of living being a Jew during the Nazi years of World War II, where the author is sent to prison camps as a child with his family. The writing is beautiful. I want to read other works by this author now.

A Crack In The Edge Of The World by Simon Winchester (7/10)
Interesting tale of the rise and fall (via an earthquake in 1906) of San Fransisco and its surrounding area. You’ll learn how the American Pacific coast was settled and how San Fransisco came to be. Interesting for history buffs, which I’m not.

Blaze by Stephen King (6/10)
King wrote this in the early 70s, which it feels like, too, if you’ve read his earlier works. Predictable yet intense ending, but it isn’t horror. It’s about a guy (Blaze) who kidnaps a baby and how he (i.e. Blaze) came to be who he is. Some memorable scenes, like the blueberry picking chapter, but nothing classic here.

The OED is known for their inclusion of quotes that illustrate a word’s meaning:

For each word in the OED, the various groupings of senses are dealt with in chronological order according to the quotation evidence, i.e. the senses with the earliest quotations appear first, and the senses which have developed more recently appear further down the entry.